


Harvestman

by MagpieCrown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Baby Sylvain, kind of, made-up mythology, poludnica!Dimitri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24668239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieCrown/pseuds/MagpieCrown
Summary: He has a name, of course - anyone does, who is there enough to be called a ‘he’. But the same people who molded his name out of earth and emmer are afraid of invoking him, and so they invent new names: they call him the Harvestman, the Midday Lord, the Blistering, and - simply, frighteningly - the Heat.*(The etymology of the name "Dimitri" got me thinking.)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Harvestman

He stands amidst the shimmering waves of rye. Their tide sprawls in all directions, lapping at the mountains, spilling along the river banks. He touches a stalk, and it quivers and leans into his caress. 

Sun is beating down, merciless, pulse after pulse after pulse of sweltering heat, and he soaks it up, and he hears the rye shiver in the hot air, and he feels well. The midday spirit is in its domain.

*

He is the midday spirit, but also the spirit of rye, of wheat, of silhouettes darting on the hazy horizon, of every bird and mouse and spider nesting and stalking and hunting in the spiky, rustling sea. He is the spirit of every leaf and every root, of the harvestman and his scythe, of the snake that bites into his bare foot, of the delirious fever and the rot and the white cathedral of a ribcage, gaping into the sunlit sky, sheltering swarms in its embrace.

He has a name, of course - anyone does, who is  _ there  _ enough to be called a ‘he’. But the same people who molded his name out of earth and emmer are afraid of invoking him, and so they invent new names: they call him the Harvestman, the Midday Lord, the Blistering, and - simply, frighteningly - the Heat. He is worshipped, to an extent; more frequently out of fear, less - out of gratitude. Few truly believe in the cruelty of the sun, the great gift-giver, until they are there, alone, squeezed between the sky and the rye, the hot air warping one into the other, clawing its way into their eyes and noses and skulls. Until they see his unhurried gait with his brow wreathed in sunlight, until he reaches down to tug their souls out of their bodies.

When people are uncaring, when the crops cry and squirm under the weight of disease, he roars his wrath and becomes burning grass, becomes smoke and charred bones and crackle of tree sap until he’s had his fill, until there is no more disease to burn. At the solstice, they stay up all night and keep the bonfires burning in his name, carrying him through the short darkness in their heat. They build statues out of straw bundles and dress them in bright cottons to burn them at dawn, call them the Summer Host, depict him as a child and an adult and an old man. He doesn’t mind - he is all of them, and he is none. Their fickle yet honest love appeases him.

In spring, as the oblique nail of the plough ruptures the skin of the earth, he follows, benign, after the horses, stepping among the flocks of birds. The coolness of the underground is unknown to him without roots to pierce it, so he observes the lumps of black soil as they are exposed to the air and the sun. Worms writhe in them, and birds bustle and squawk over their prey, catching him with their wings. He is less benevolent when it’s the sower’s turn, and the birds stay at a distance, wary, and the seeds find their way into the loose embrace of the earth.

Over summer, he watches children play in the fields, he watches lovers sneak away, careless to everything but each other, he watches animals and birds and bugs. He wonders, sometimes, what it’s like to be a living creature, and summers are when he wonders most often. He rarely goes into the villages and rarer still into the cities, but sometimes the heat pours into the streets, thick and unhurried, and the syrup of it slides under every door, stuffs its fingers into every throat, inquisitive, foreign.

In autumn, the fields brim with songs as people part the seas with scythes. Rye is harvested and swathed, and he sleeps in the stacks together with foxes and snakes and centipedes as the earth cools down for the night. Rye is threshed and beaten and milled, and when the days start growing colder and the weather changes, he leaves the fields until spring and slumbers in the sacks of flour, keeping it dry and safe, rousing from his sleep to offer it in his cupped hands when a mother sends a daughter to fetch some for baking. If the dough rises well, he is thanked, in a soft, motherly voice, and is called, gently, the Sun Child.

*

He stands in the rye, and hears every stalk whisper to him, feels the touch of every bug as it scuttles along the leaves. He is aware of every creature in the field, but they fade out of his existence when they burrow where heated up air or gossamer roots can’t reach them.

He feels a centipede make its unhurried way along the top log of a well just beyond the edge of the field, over a mile away. The well is old and barely used, overgrown and dark, its cool depth concealed from him. He watches the centipede idly, following the gentle, rye-like flow of its legs, until it slips on the slick coolness and tumbles into the well. Just before it winks out, he feels it connect with something, but it’s not water - water can’t feel clammy, and shaky, and tired, and scared.

Intrigued, he appears before the well, the wisps of rye trying to cling to him as he steps from the field and onto the bed of clover. 

He peers into the well, but the sun that envelops him doesn’t reach into it, and it takes him a moment to discern shapes in the darkness.

It’s a human child, a boy, shivering in the water, his thin arms straining where he pushes them against opposing walls to keep himself from sinking further. He whips his head up when the spirit blocks out what little light he had.

“Hey! O-over here,” the child calls.

His voice is hoarse - he must have been here for a while, screaming or crying. He was too deep, too cold for the spirit to know.

“What are you doing there?” the spirit answers, enunciating carefully. The human tongue is a peculiar, complicated thing. Voices were given to them for singing, and yet they insist on - however, that is unimportant.

“I uh - I fell,” the child says, reaching up to scratch his head and subsequently dropping himself into the water.

The spirit watches as the child sputters and rights himself again, his shoulders quaking - from cold or exhaustion.

“It’s actually really fun here,” the child calls up. “Really…  _ cool.  _ I’d invite you down but it’d be a tight fit, so maybe,” his hand slips a little, “you could haul me up? You got a rope?”

The child is speaking to him as if addressing a peer, a fellow human, the spirit realizes. Does he not recognize..?

“Do you know who I am?” the question slips out before he fully thinks it.

The child squints up. “No? The sun is really bright? Does it matter right now?” His eyes widen suddenly. “Wait - are you - you know Miklan?”

“Miklan?” the spirit repeats, confused.

Whatever the child reads in his tone, makes him relax a fraction. “Oh, you don’t - good. That’s good. I’m Sylvain. And, you know what, great talking, but it’s giving me a crick in the neck. Can you help or not? What’s your name?”

If not for the centipede’s final moment, he’d never guess that the child was scared. He chitters on like a sparrow even though his teeth clack together from the cold.

The spirit looks around, notes a thick rope attached to a bucket. The bucket is half-rusted, and the rope seems to have started rotting already, but maybe it will hold the child’s weight.

He leans back over the edge of the well, meeting Sylvain’s round eyes. “I can help you, yes. And it’s - Dimitri.”


End file.
